Jacob Waxman

Jake is a board member and senior trainer with the Leading Change Network. Jacob grew up on Maui, Hawaii, where he learned the value of community at his family’s house, which served both as an informal gathering place for people of all walks of life and a synagogue for the island’s small Jewish population. He first got involved with organizing as a student at Emory University, where he helped found the Emory Living Wage Coalition, through which students joined with the University’s service workers to organize for improved wages and working conditions. Upon graduating, Jacob moved to Argentina where he learned the arts of political organizing and Spanish while working at a local NGO.

When he returned to the United States, he joined the labor movement, organizing healthcare workers with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Jacob then received his Masters in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government in 2009, where he was a teaching fellow with Prof. Marshall Ganz and Ronald Heifetz, helping to teach courses on organizing and leadership. Since graduating he has been teaching and learning about organizing alongside leaders in the immigrant rights, climate change, labor, public education, and health/human rights movements.